US diplomat to discuss Iraq policy at Feb. 22 Baker Institute lecture

CONTACT: Franz Brotzen
PHONE: 713-348-6775
EMAIL: franz.brotzen@rice.edu

US diplomat to discuss Iraq policy at Feb. 22 Baker Institute lecture

Despite a smaller U.S. military presence, the civil war in Iraq continues to simmer. The level of carnage has dropped from its apex in 2007, but thousands of Iraqi citizens have been killed since the beginning of 2010 — even as the conflict has drawn less media attention. The chief U.S. diplomat working on Iraq, Michael Corbin, will give an update on the conflict Feb. 22 at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy.

Corbin’s talk, “U.S. Policy Toward Iraq: Challenges and Opportunities,” will begin at 6 p.m. in Baker Hall’s Kelly International Conference Facility on the Rice campus, 6100 Main St. For directions, go to www.bakerinstitute.org/media/media_directions.cfm.

Corbin, the deputy assistant secretary of state in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs for Iraq Issues, is a career senior foreign service officer. He has extensive experience throughout the Middle East, and he has received several superior and meritorious honor awards for his service.

From September 2008 until July 2009, he served as minister-counselor for political-military affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. From 2006 to 2007, he was assigned as charge d’affaires in the Syrian capital, Damascus. He served as the minister-counselor for economic and political affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo from August 2003 to June 2006, and he was the deputy director of the State Department Office of Arabian Peninsula Affairs from 2001 to 2003. He served at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo from 1994 to 1997 as the political-military affairs officer and at the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait from 1987 to 1989.

Outside of the Middle East, Corbin was the director of the counter-narcotics section at the U.S. Embassy in Caracas, Venezuela, from 1997 to 2001. He also worked in Washington, D.C., as a staff assistant in the Bureau of Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs and in the office of United Nations Political Affairs in the Bureau of International Organization Affairs. His first tour after joining the State Department was at the U.S. Embassy in Tunisia from 1985 to 1987.

A graduate of Swarthmore College, Corbin served from 1982 to 1984 as a Peace Corps volunteer in Mauritania, where he worked as an agricultural extension officer and as a trainer for new Peace Corps volunteers. Corbin speaks French, Spanish and Arabic.

Members of the news media who want to attend should RSVP to Franz Brotzen at franz.brotzen@rice.edu or 713-348-6775.